Hillary Clinton needs Jewish vote

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, June 1, 1999

WASHINGTON - If Hillary Rodham Clinton runs for the U.S. Senate from New York, she will be hoping for support from the Empire State's sizable Jewish population to win.

A key advisor, who asked not to be identified, said that while the first lady had no specific aide working on the Jewish vote, she had received advice from several political figures and experts on Jewish politics in the state.

With a population of 1.6 million - 9.1 percent of the state's total - Jews are a key ingredient to victory in New York.

For openers, Clinton, if she runs, will have to explain remarks she made last year favoring creation of a Palestinian state, still a sore point among many Jews.

Her May 1998 statement that it was "in the long-term interests of the Middle East for Palestine to be a state" came in the midst of delicate peace negotiations and created a brief but intense controversy. The White House politely disavowed her comments. Israel has long opposed Palestinian statehood as a threat to Israeli security.

But in Israeli elections earlier this month, incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost to challenger Ehud Barak, who has vowed to jump-start negotiations that might ultimately lead to Palestinian statehood.

The election signaled a turning point that may end up countering the fallout of Clinton's Palestinian-statehood remark among Jewish voters, Clinton supporters said. Several pointed to the decision last week by the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, to drop its opposition to a Palestinian state.

Changing atmosphere

"Clearly, the atmospherics are changing," said David Singer, research director for the American Jewish Committee, a New York-based organization devoted to civil rights and religious freedom.

Others point to polls showing American Jews are not uniformly hostile to a Palestinian state. An AJC survey this month of 1,000 Jews found 47 percent opposing such a state and 44 percent supporting it.

The Democratic advisor who spoke on condition of anonymity said, "There'll be elements in the Jewish community that will make an issue out of this" but predicted that the issue would not be decisive.

"She's going to have to make her case to Jewish voters on why she should be senator from New York, but that's going to involve bread-and-butter New York issues rather than foreign policy," the advisor said.

New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, said he had talked to Clinton about her Palestinian-statehood remark in March. She explained that she had been inspired by a conversation with the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who told her that

"the only way to make peace is with an entity, and that if it had no shape and no form, it is very difficult to enforce an agreement," Silver said.

"But her commitment is the same as our government's," he continued. "She believes unequivocally that the parties should make an agreement, and that our government should not impose anything."

GOP says she's vulnerable

Republicans say Clinton is vulnerable among Jewish voters.

"The Jewish community has a long memory," said Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "I think Hillary Clinton will find that support in the Jewish community will not be as easy as she thinks it is."

For Jewish voters, he added, a race involving Clinton is just as likely to turn on issues such as crime, education and saving Social Security.

Brooks also pointed to the 1997 re-election victory of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is seen as the leading Republican contender for the Senate seat being vacated in 2000 by retiring Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

In that race, Giuliani, a non-Jew, won 70 percent of the Jewish vote against Democratic challenger Ruth Messinger, who is Jewish.

"If I were a Democratic strategist, I'd be very concerned about Giuliani's ability to leverage his strength by bringing those constituencies into supporting Republican candidates," Brooks said.

Monolithic vote

Whichever way it leans in any given election, the Jewish vote is not monolithic. In New York City, with a million Jewish residents, 10 to 15 percent of the Jewish population is Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox, according to Singer. Though many of these Jews are loyal Democrats, they also are politically conservative when compared with more secular Jews, Singer said.

Historically, there is a solid Jewish Republican tradition in New York. The late Republican lawmaker Jacob Javits, who was Jewish, served in the U.S. Senate from New York from 1957 to 1981. Rep. Benjamin Gilman, another New York Republican Jew, has served in the House since 1973.

Some polls show Clinton doing well among Jews. In a survey last week of 807 voters by the Hamden, Conn.-based Quinnipiac College Polling Institute, Clinton beat Giuliani 48 percent to 42 percent. Among Jewish voters, who made up 8 percent of those questioned, Clinton trounced Giuliani 60 percent to 33 percent.

A poll last month by the Poughkeepsie, N.Y.-based Marist College Institute for Public Opinion showed the two in a statistical dead heat: 44 percent for Clinton and 43 percent for Giuliani. But among Jews, 12 percent of the 512 questioned, Clinton beat Giuliani 51 percent to 31 percent.